When he had finished speaking, she only replied: 

“Are you disposed to let me go away now?  Take away your hands, so that I may rise to my feet.”

“Look here, Irene.”

“Will you let me go?”

“Irene—­is your resolution irrevocable?”

“Will you let me go.”

“Tell me only whether this resolution, this mad resolution of yours, which you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?”

“Yes—­let me go!”

“Then stay.  You know well that you are at home here.  We shall go away to-morrow morning.”

She rose to her feet in spite of him, and said in a hard tone: 

“No.  It is too late.  I do not want sacrifice; I do not want devotion.”

“Stay!  I have done what I ought to do; I have said what I ought to say.  I have no further responsibility on your behalf.  My conscience is at peace.  Tell me what you want me to do, and I will obey."’

She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked, in a very calm voice: 

“Well, then, explain.”

“Explain what?  What do you wish me to explain?”

“Everything—­everything that you thought about before changing your mind.  Then I will see what I ought to do.”

“But I thought about nothing at all.  I had to warn you that you were going to commit an act of folly.  You persist; then I ask to share in this act of folly, and I even insist on it.”

“It is not natural to change one’s mind so quickly.”

“Listen, my dear love.  It is not a question here of sacrifice or devotion.  On the day when I realized that I loved you, I said to myself what every lover ought to say to himself in the same case:  ’The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets her, and who takes her, enters into a sacred contract with himself and with her.  That is, of course, in dealing with a woman like you, not a woman with a fickle heart and easily impressed.’

“Marriage which has a great social value, a great legal value, possesses in my eyes only a very slight moral value, taking into account the conditions under which it generally takes place.

“Therefore, when a woman, united by this lawful bond, but having no attachment to her husband, whom she cannot love, a woman whose heart is free, meets a man whom she cares for, and gives herself to him, when a man who has no other tie, takes a woman in this way, I say that they pledge themselves toward each other by this mutual and free agreement much more than by the ‘Yes’ uttered in the presence of the mayor.

“I say that, if they are both honorable persons, their union must be more intimate, more real, more wholesome, than if all the sacraments had consecrated it.